External Address

Profile

My research focuses primarily on two different aspects of sensory processing: the mechanisms and influences of selective attention, and the way in which the brain integrates information, including unusual occurrences of integration such as Synaesthesia.

I did my PhD at the University of Melbourne under the supervision of Prof. Jason Mattingley. I was then awarded a CJ Martin (NHMRC) / RG Menzies (Menzies Foundation) Postdoctoral Fellowship to work at the Visual Attention Laboratory, Brigham & Women's Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, USA, working with Professor Jeremy Wolfe and Dr Todd Horowitz on mechanisms of visual attention.

My research explores the way in which the brain maintains the delicate balance between voluntary deployments of attention towards a goal, and the involuntary shifts of attention caused by salient events in the environment. I am also interested in how we deploy attention in complex visual environments, and the role of attention in integrating different visual features or attributes (the 'binding problem'). I am exploring these aspects of visual attention using psychophysics and neuroimaging. I am also interested in the way in which the brain changes and adapts to injury or modified input.

My second stream of research focuses on synaesthesia, an unusual condition in which stimulation in one sensory modality generates an additional experience. For example, in 'sound-colour' synaesthesia, a sound elicits a colour experience; in 'grapheme-colour' synaesthesia, letters, digits and words each generate particular involuntary colours. Although unusual, synaesthesia is not a disorder; it can provide us with a unique view of the integration that underlies perception. We are currently conducting studies on grapheme-colour, sound-colour, and olfactory-colour synaesthesia.

As always, I am happy to hear from people who think they might have synaesthesia - check out our Synaesthesia Research page for more information.

Teichmann, L., Carlson, T., & Rich, A.N. (2016, August). Decoding digits and dice: How long does it take to access magnitude? Poster session presented at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders Annual Workshop, The Fairmont Resort, Leura.

Rich, A.N. (2014, May). Selecting what’s crucial and ignoring the rest: Attention, integration, and the way we perceive the world. Colloquium at the Department of Cognitive Science 3M Research Fiesta, Macquarie University, Sydney.

Rich, A. (2013, August). Functional magnetic resonance imaging: Brimming with possibilities, but what should we look out for? Colloquium at the Critical Issues in Research Seminar Series, Macquarie University, Sydney.

Rich, A.N. (2009, December). Writing a good grant. Invited presentation given at the Human Communication Science Network Summer Festival skill session, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

Rich, A.N. (2008, December). Writing a good grant. Invited presentation given at the Human Communication Science Network Summer Festival skill session, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.